Pro Libertate: An American "Yezhovschina"?

Pro Libertate: An American "Yezhovschina"?

Maxwell Smart: Are you a psychologist, Dr. Stueben?

Dr. Stueben: I'm the president of the psychologist society for mental health and adjustment through fulfillment.

Smart: What kind of an organization is that?

Stueben: We're a hate group.

Smart (following a double-take): A hate group?

Stueben: Oh, in the sense that we cure hate and fear. We hate hate. Hate it.



From "All in the Mind," a 1965 episode offering redundant proof that Get Smart was the work of perceptive and prescient satirists.



A September 1996 American Bar Association conference on terrorism and the law in Washington, D.C. presented me with an opportunity I had long coveted.


Among the presenters at that event was former New York Times legal and political affairs columnist Anthony Lewis, long one of the most predictable journalistic voices on the left. One of his favorite tropes was the description of the American Right as "merchants of hate," an expression that seemed to serve as the title for every second or third column Lewis wrote.



If you think this is Wallace Shawn, you've fallen victim to one of the classic blunders: This is actually former New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis. The estimable Mr. Shawn -- character actor, vocal artist, and accomplished playwright, is seen below and to the right.


During a break in the proceedings I cornered Lewis, who looked a little less like Wallace Shawn than I had anticipated. By way of introduction, told him (in all sincerity) that I had enjoyed reading his book Gideon's Trumpet as a High School student.


"I've long wanted to ask you something about a subject you frequently address in your column," I continued. "You often make reference to `right-wing hate groups.' Do you acknowledge the existence of left-wing hate groups, as well -- and do you consider them to be a potential threat to society?"


Lewis stood in genuinely stunned silence for a good half a minute or so before tentatively saying, "Well, I suppose there could be such a thing as a left-wing hate group" -- a made with the same grudging, reluctant tone one might use when conceding the possible existence of unicorns, extra-terrestrial intelligence, or cerebral matter inside of Sean Hannity's skull.



Like many others of his political persuasion, Lewis was hard-wired in such a way that he could clearly discern "hate" only when it manifest itself among his political opponents.



He had internalized the conceit that the left, as the embodiment of progress and tolerance, was utterly devoid of hatred and similar base motivations; those impulses are monopolized by the forces of "reaction." Since, according to this ideological model, conservatives are hostage to false consciousness, they really aren't honest about their own motives and indeed cannot be.


Even if they don't consciously hate anybody, the politics of conservatives and other "right-wingers" are objectively hateful, you see, because they oppose inevitable social progress. What other motive could exist for such behavior, apart from simple, irrational belligerence or even outright hatred?


The only politically acceptable hatred, therefore, is to hate the haters -- those whose attitudes and opinions are irreconcilable with progressive prejudices. Where possible, efforts should be made to rehabilitate haters into useful members of the collective -- useful, that is, if only as informants and teaching examples. But when dealing with authentically incorrigible haters -- particularly those unwilling to confess that hatred is their genuine motivation -- sterner measures may be necessary.


This was the logic -- if that word applies -- behind the political use of psychiatry in the Soviet Union: Only someone clinically deranged could hate socialism, and since such people were a danger to themselves and society, they had to be incarcerated in the psiushka (psychiatric gulag) and forcibly cured of their anti-social(ist) tendencies. The heroic former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky recounts his own experience in the Soviet psycho-gulag in his memoir, To Build a Castle.



The "Poisoned Dwarf": Nikolai Yezhov, diminutive in stature, crippled in body and morals, was the intellectual architect and, as head of the NKVD, chief enforcer of Stalin's Great Purge.


The Soviet use of psychiatry was an outgrowth of the Regime's longstanding policy of pre-emption: Threats to "stability" and "social order" had to be recognized and aborted before they reached maturity.


This concept was embedded in the Soviet Union's Fundamental Principles of Penal Legislation, which identified the central mission of the state's law enforcement apparatus (chiefly the Ckeha or secret police, by whatever acronym it was later known) as that of identifying, and removing the threat of, "socially dangerous persons."


This notion was encapsulated in Article 58 of the penal code, which served as the legal foundation for the Soviet regime's perpetual war of terror against dissent.


The law dealing with "socially dangerous persons," observes the authoritative Black Book of Communism, dealt with "any activity that, without directly aiming to overthrow or weaken the Soviet regime, was in itself `an attack on the political or economic achievements of the revolutionary proletariat.' The law thus not only punished intentional transgressions but also proscribed possible or unintentional acts."


And the term "socially dangerous persons" itself was based on "extremely elastic categories" that permitted the imprisonment of people in the gulag "even in the absence of guilt." This is because that the Soviet rulers were pleased to call "the law" specified that incarceration, exile, or execution could be employed as means of "social protection" against "anyone classified as a danger to society, either for a specific crime that has been committed or when, even if exonerated of a particular crime, the person is still reckoned to pose a threat to society."


Note carefully here how Soviet "law" discarded entirely with the idea of punishing overt acts, focusing instead on the supposed motivations of those deemed innately threatening to the regime. Note as well how the system was rigged to nullify exculpatory verdicts.


Of course, the Soviet government punished common criminals, at least those it didn't recruit into the ranks of its enforcement agencies. But as Paul Gregory points out in his book Lenin's Brain, most of those imprisoned in the gulag were there not because of what they had done, but because of what the state suspected they could do; they were being isolated from the rest of society "because of actual or suspected opposition to the Soviet state."


In 1935, an individual best described as five feet of feculent malice added another key element to the Soviet formula for institutionalized terror. A foul, vulgar little creature named Nikolai Yezhov, an intimate associate of Stalin, wrote a pseudo-academic paper contending that any form of political opposition should be treated as incipient terrorism.



Yezhov, who came to be known as "Stalin's Poison Dwarf," lusted to be head of the secret police. He secured that post following the assassination of Stalin's rival Sergei Kirov, an act of terrorism orchestrated by Stalin that inaugurated the campaign of official terrorism known as the Great Purge. Yezhov toppled his predecessor as head of the NKVD, Genrikh Yagoda, by accusing the old Bolshevik of being inadequately zealous in finding and eliminating Stalin's enemies. Yezhov distinguished himself by his murderous zeal until he, too, was denounced, tortured into multiple confessions, and executed.


Would-be commissarina for political correctness Bonnie Erbe, wearing red, of course.
For roughly three years, Yezhov conducted a reign of terror and persecution that came to be known as the Yezhovschina -- the "Era of Yezhov."


Viewed in the context of the Soviet regime's decades-long campaign of repression and terror, Yezhov's role in building the body count was relatively modest. The same really can't be said of his distinctive contribution to the art and practice of totalitarianism, namely the reductionist claim that all anti-statist activism will eventually beget terrorism.


Trace elements of the Poisoned Dwarf's influence -- or, at least, a toxin very similar in composition -- can be found in the Pentagon's claim that political protests are a form of "low-level terrorism."


Echoes of Yezhov's claim, and the Soviet doctrine of dealing pre-emptively with "socially dangerous persons," can also be heard in demands for federal action to imprison "haters" even in the absence of overt criminal acts.


Bonnie Erbe, who has afflicted public television for decades and now scribbes the occasional cyber-screed for CBS News, recently gave full-throated expression to the Soviet perspective on "pre-emption."

“If yesterday’s Holocaust Museum slaying … is not a clarion call for banning hate speech, I don’t know what is," shrilled Erbe, insisting that something must be done about ridding the Internet and the public dialogue of hate speech." But she wouldn't stop there; the purge would mean doing away with the "haters," as well.

Referring to the accused murderers of security guard Stephen Johns, abortionist George Tiller, and military recruiter William Long (whose alleged murderer was an American convert to Islam), Erbe insists: “It’s not enough to prosecute these murders as murders. They are hate-motivated crimes and each of these men had been under some sort of police surveillance prior to their actions. Isn’t it time we started rounding up promoters of hate before they kill?”

String up the barbed wire, sharpen the guillotine, fire up the crematoria: There are haters in our midst to be dealt with!

Please tune in...

... to my new show Pro Libertate Radio on the Liberty News Radio Network. And give me a call at 1- 866-989-6397 (NEWS).

One more thing...

Some of you might be interested in the developments I touch upon here.

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Pro Libertate: Cheney's Revenge: Coming to a Police Station Near You (UPDATED, 6/10)

Pro Libertate: Cheney's Revenge: Coming to a Police Station Near You (UPDATED, 6/10)

Ryan S. Smith of Niagara Falls, New York, is a 21-year-old ex-con suspected of taking part in a vicious kidnapping and robbery. He is, quite likely, a fairly nasty specimen of humanity. Whether or not that's the case, he will likely become a pivotal figure in the legal struggle over institutionalizing torture as method of enforcing court orders and conducting police interrogations.


In July 2006, four suspects invaded a home, bound and gagged two small children, and took the mother hostage. While one remained behind, three of the suspects took the mother to another home, where they shot a man while carrying out a robbery. (The victim, fortunately, survived.)


While watching the children, the fourth conspirator -- Smith, according to prosecutors -- helped himself to a soda, apparently unaware that by doing so he would leave behind a potentially critical quantum of DNA evidence.


Smith is also suspected of staging an armed hold-up of a convenience store on the following Christmas Eve. A glove found at the scene of that robbery also contained a DNA sample.
The DNA samples collected from the glove and the soda can were matched by the FBI's Combined DNA System (CODIS) with a sample previously taken from Smith.


In August of last year, Niagara County Court Judge Sara Sheldon Sperrazza issued an order requiring Smith to provide a DNA sample via a painless swab of his inner cheek. Smith didn't object, and the sample was taken without difficulty.


At this point, the story becomes complicated by professional incompetence. The Niagara Falls Police sent the sample to the wrong lab, where it was opened and contaminated.


The investigators went back to Judge Sperrazza for a second order, which -- unlike the first one -- she granted ex parte; this means that Smith's defense counsel was not informed or consulted. That last point is critically important, as we will see anon.


Smith bridled over the second order, refusing to provide a second DNA sample. This prompted the police to consult with the County District Attorney's office to learn how much force they could employ to compel Smith to provide potentially self-incriminating evidence.


Let's stop here to ask what should be an obvious question: In a system that is supposed to favor the rights of the accused over the convenience of the accuser, what sense does it make to have the prosecution decide the extent to which physical duress can be applied to force a defendant to incriminate himself?


The answer, it seems to me, is "none at all" -- unless, of course, the system as it actually exists is rigged to favor the needs of the prosecution, at whatever expense to the rights of the accused. Once this is understood, the next development in the Smith case is hardly surprising, however troubling it should be to people who care at all about due process.


As Detective Lt. William Thomson would later testify, Assistant Niagara County D.A. Doreen M. Hoffmann, who is presiding over the prosecution of Ryan Smith, instructed the police that "we could use the minimum force that was necessary" to force the suspect to submit to a DNA test.


Now, think carefully about that formulation: In principle, it authorizes the use of any amount of force needed to extract the sample, since the critical term is "necessary." As long as the police were reasonably careful in calibrating the duress the applied, they could continue escalating the level of force until it broke the suspect; wherever they end up would obviously be the "minimum" necessary to accomplish their objectives.




Smith was brought in handcuffs to the police station and informed that the investigators had been authorized to use physical force. Although nobody intended to harm him, Smith was told, the sample was going to be surrendered; it was just a question of how much he wanted to endure before it was. Smith still refused to comply.


Confronted with an intransigent suspect who refused to provide critical evidence, the investigators reluctantly strapped the handcuffed Smith to a downward sloping table, covered his face with a towel, and waterboarded him. He broke within seconds, and meekly permitted the DNA sample to be taken.


On the basis of the DNA evidence, Smith was hit with a 24-count criminal indictment. He was also charged with "criminal contempt of court" for forcing his interrogators to torture him.


When Smith's defense counsel filed a motion to suppress the evidence based on Fourth and Fifth Amendment protections, the same Judge who issued the ex parte orders produced a ruling validating the use of waterboarding as means of forcing compliance, as long as it's not done "maliciously" or to "excess."


This account is true and accurate in every detail, save one - the specific torture protocol that was used to compel Smith to surrender a sample of his DNA.


He wasn't subjected to water torture; instead, he was given a brief taste of electroshock torture by way of a Taser that was used to inflict a "drive stun." This involves placing the prongs of the device directly on the body of the victim for a brief, painful, paralyzing charge.

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While Smith was spared the much-discussed horrors of controlled drowning, there was no practical reason waterboarding could not have been used, if his interrogators had chosen that method of "pain compliance," either at the beginning of their interrogation or after trying other modes that had failed. Remember, "minimum" force is left entirely to the discretion of the interrogators, and it's defined as whatever succeeds in extracting what is wanted from the suspect.


I don't presume to be a prophet, but I feel serenely confident in predicting this: If the tactics used in this case survive judicial scrutiny, the use of electro-shock and other torture protocols -- including waterboarding -- in suspect interrogation and enforcement of court orders will become not only acceptable, but routine.


In fact, electro-shock torture is already commonplace, albeit as a means of forcing unruly people -- not dangerous, not threatening, but merely uncooperative -- to submit to police orders.


The original rationale for the use of the Taser is that it provides a safe, non-lethal alternative to firearms for use in dealing with violent criminal suspects.


However, the much more common use of the Taser is as an instrument of "pain compliance" when police confront peaceful but uncooperative citizens. "Pain compliance" is a legitimate means of subduing a violent suspect without placing the lives of others in jeopardy.


As a means of forcing non-violent citizens ("subjects" is actually the proper word) to submit to police in which there is no legitimate suspicion of a criminal act, "pain compliance" is nothing other than a species of torture: Submit, helot -- instantaneously and without back-talk -- or Officer Pavlov with get out the sizzle-stick and make you do the electron dance.


With police regularly using Tasers to administer summary punishment to non-compliant civilians, it's not surprising that their use has now been authorized as a means of extracting self-incriminating evidence from criminal suspects.


We shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking that the domestic use of "enhanced interrogation" will be confined to enforcing court orders, as mortifying as that application is in and of itself; the welcome mat is now out for a return of the Third Degree, albeit in subtle, incremental steps.


What is striking about the case of Ryan Smith is the utter lack of exigent circumstances behind this ratification of official torture.


There was no "ticking bomb," no concealed nuclear weapon, no secret plan to spike municipal water supplies with chemical weapons. Just a recalcitrant criminal suspect who was making things a little difficult for the police.


The crime itself took place three years ago. DNA evidence collected from the crime scene is as secure as can be expected, given the proven incompetence of the investigators. Smith's DNA is not mutable.


As New York criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield points out, "Normally, the refusal to comply with a court order would compel the police to let the prosecutor know, who would then move to have the defendant held in contempt for failure to obey the court order."


Judge Sperrazza is "the first judge in western civilization to say you can use a Taser to enforce a court order," complained Patrick Balkin, Smith's defense counsel. He also pointed out that the precedent could inspire other practical applications of electro-shock "pain compliance": “They have now given the Niagara Falls police discretion to Taser anybody anytime they think it’s reasonable. [Sperrazza's] decision says you can enforce a court order by force. If you extrapolate that, we no longer have to have child support hearings; you can just Taser the parent.”


In a lawsuit filed against the City of Niagara Falls, Smith alleges that he was "tortured into unconsciousness" by repeated Taser charges. The police investigators insist that they were much gentler in the application of electro-shock trauma, but their testimony regarding the number and duration of shocks is mutually self-contradictory (as well as inconsistent with the record kept by the Taser unit itself).


There are a number of other troubling aspects to the case. Smith's defense attorney contends Smith was never shown a copy of the court order demanding the first DNA sample; the police insist that the paperwork was shown to Smith, but the affidavit attesting to service "cannot be located," as Judge Sperrazza acknowledged in her ruling (.pdf). No matter: She was willing to take the police at their word. Of course.


In justifying the use of a court order for a DNA test -- a painless but invasive procedure -- Sperrazza relied on a New York State precedent dealing with a court-ordered blood sample. "As the application seeks an intrusion in the suspect's body," Sperrazza wrote, "it may not be ex parte but must beupon notice and give the suspect an opportunity to oppose the request."


Once again: The second court order demanding a DNA sample, the one Smith refused, was issued ex parte. Sperrazza glides over that complication by insisting that Smith had consented to the first order without raising objections, an argument that is a pretty decent specimen of the ignoratio elenchi fallacy.


Sperrazza takes note of Smith's argument that the use of the Taser was "in the nature of torture and cannot be condoned." This prompts the following judicial shoulder-shrug: "[T]he Court does not find that the infliction of pain in a reasonable manner, to induce compliance, is necessarily unconstitutional. "


This is to say that torture (Sperrazza did not reject the description) via Taser can be entirely "constitutional" and "reasonable" as a means of breaking the resistance of a suspect.


Judge Sperazza's ruling -- which is almost certain to be appealed -- is the domestic offspring of the sophistries begotten by Jay Bybee and John Yoo during their time as apparatchiks in the Bush Regime's Office of Legal Counsel.


When the Dear Leader (and his dead-eyed GrandVizier, Cheney the Malignant) demanded a legal rationale for torture, Bybee -- a pious Mormon Sunday School teacher with the mien of Ned Flanders -- provided the general outline and let Yoo run wild as a detail worker.


That's how we ended up with a standard of CIA interrogation in which duress could be applied in any way that didn't involve "organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or death." That's how Yoo could go on to suggest that the President could order the sexual torture of children as a means of forcing the parents to cooperate. It would be interesting to see how Bybee, who now sits on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, would react to a case involving the "enhanced interrogation" of a criminal suspect.


"Criminal means, once tolerated, are soon preferred," warned Edmund Burke. Don't be surprised if, ere long, the interrogation rooms in American police departments mutate into CIA-style "black sites" of the sort now familiar to more than a few traumatized innocent foreigners.


UPDATE, June 10: The Met and Water Torture

A major "anti-corruption" probe of London's Metropolitan Police includes allegations that police officers used water torture -- colloquially known as "waterboarding" -- against suspects in narcotics investigations, according to Sean O'Neill of the Times of London. The probe is also investigating claims that police fabricated evidence and stole property from suspects -- forms of official corruption quite common in the American version of the murderous fraud called the "war on drugs."


Although the allegations of corruption and torture are being probed by Scotland Yard with the "utmost seriousness," one official close to the inquiry insists that the method of water torture used was less sophisticated than the CIA's preferred approach: It was less a matter of strapping someone to a table and using calibrated amounts of controlled drowning than "shoving their heads in a bowl of water."


I've said it before: Sometimes it's a pity that only one ocean separates the UK from the U.S. The relative ease of correspondence between the United State and its Mother Regime allows for pernicious cross-pollination of all kinds of dangerous and stupid ideas. We tend to be perhaps six to eight months behind Great Britain in our descent into the Total State. And here we see how bad ideas tend to travel east from Washington to London, as well as the reverse.


(My thanks to the anonymous commenter who brought the London water torture scandal to my attention.)


Something to watch for ...

I don't know when, or if, anything will materialize in print, but on Monday I spent more than an hour on the phone with Dan Barry, a columnist for the New York Times. He was interested in getting my views about some matters involving the organization that once employed me. In the event something comes of this, I'll be sure to let you know.

A reminder ...

Monday at 6:00 PM Central time will see the debut of Pro Libertate Radio on the Liberty News Radio Network. LNRN is a small, young start-up with only a handful of stations so far, but the programs are accessible via the Net, both as simulcasts and in the on-line archive. The toll-free call-in number is 1-866-986-6397 (866-986-NEWS). I hope to hear from you!


An utterly gratuitous video extra ...

... it's just that every time I hear "Niagara Falls," it tears me apart:

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Pro Libertate: Don't Tase Me, Big Bro!

Pro Libertate: Don't Tase Me, Big Bro!


With respect to the use of stun guns to administer electro-shock trauma to small children, the State and its agents apply a sliding scale of official charges and punishments.


When a police officer subdues a child as young as five years of age by treating him to a 50,000-volt shock, this is a law enforcement decision that will be the subject of an official review.


Sure, the officer's actions will eventually be vindicated, but in the interest of good public relations the officer, his superiors, and the local media have to undergo an intricate ritual, as stylized as Kabuki theater, before announcing the official inquiry's foregone conclusion.


When a group of Florida prison guards subject scores of children, ranging in age from 5 to 17, to 50,000-volt shocks as a kind of bizarre prank, this is a lapse of judgment that may have adverse career consequences -- up to and including termination -- but no criminal charges or intervention by the Department of Children and Families.


On more than a few occasions, as I've read about or seen coverage of the use of Tasers and similar portable agonizers on young children, I've been forced to exclaim, "Do those people have children of their own?!" Well, at least some of them do, and see nothing amiss in cajoling them into receiving a couple of Pavlovian shocks. And so the public memory is refreshed with another illustration of the fact that government "service" selects for a personality type in which stupidity and sadism are unusually salient traits.


In one of the "playful" incidents, children were arranged in a circle holding hands so that they could share the charge when one of them was shocked. At another prison, children were shocked individually by having a stun gun pressed against their bodies. At least two of the kids were sent "sprawling to the floor, crying out in pain and clutching at agonizing burns on their arms," and one of them ended up in the hospital.


One would expect that criminal charges would ensue as a result of those incidents. One would be wrong. Three employees -- Lt. Russell Bourgault and Sgt. Walter Schmidt, 14-year veterans of the prison system, and six-yet vet Sgt. Charmaine Davis -- were fired. Maj. Seth Adams, a 19-year veteran, and Lt. P.J. Weisner, who had 11 years in the system, resigned. According to news reports, an additional 16 employees face unspecified "discipline."


Thus far, however, there are no pending criminal charges, and the Florida State Department of Children and Family Services (CFS), one of the nation's most energetic child-snatching bureaucracies (it produced Janet Reno, remember), has shown no interest in separating the injured children from their parents. This is a remarkably restrained official reaction, one likely influenced by the fact that the parents involved in this scandal are or were government employees.


On the other hand, when a privately employed father dealing with a misbehaving 14-year-old son decides to eschew the belt in favor of a home-made electric stun gun, this is an act of felony child abuse and domestic battery worthy of the full punitive attention of the state law enforcement apparatus.


Fatal "tough love" in Florida: Prosecutor Pam Bondi watches a recording of the last minutes of Martin Anderson, a 14-year-old who died at a teen "boot camp" after being abused by the staff.

Is there some special significance to the fact that all of these incidents involving the electro-shock of children took place in Florida, a state where more than a few children have perished in "boot camps" for juvenile offenders? I take note of that fact without venturing an explanation.

Police "resource officers" stationed in that state's public schools have used Tasers -- the full-fledged, consistently lethal instrument, not the relatively low-yield stun guns used in the last two examples -- on kindergarten-age children with impunity on the assumption that the Taser is a relatively safe and humane implement of pain compliance.


So it may have been inevitable that a Florida entrepreneur would make a stun gun available to parents on the assumption that a mild jolt of electricity would be a safer and more effective corrective than any of the more familiar modes of administering corporal punishment. In 2003, a massage therapist from Boca Raton named Steve Robnor devised and marketed a device called the B-Stik, a billy club-shaped implement designed to deliver a brief shock -- of roughly the same intensity as a bee sting -- to an unruly child.


Robnor insisted that the B-Stik would leave no lasting marks, and do no significant harm. "It's a safer alternative for people who physically discipline their children," Robnor insisted. "Children should not be subjected to conventional physical discipline methods that have proven harmful. This product will enable a parent or caregiver to physically correct a child's misbehavior safely, effectively, and most of all, responsibly."


According to Robnor, his kiddie-prod actually removed the risk of "overdoing" physical discipline (and had other massage-related applications as well). Leaving aside the merits -- such as they are -- of Robnor's product, it's important to recognize that much of his sales patter reflected the views of the Florida state child-snatcher bureaucracy, and capitalized on a market niche they probably helped to create.


At the time the B-Stik was introduced, the official position of the Florida Department of Child and Family Services was that spanking of any kind and duration was to be discouraged and dealt with as potential abuse. "No child needs a spanking," sniffed CFS spokeswoman Marilyn Munoz. "Spanking can be dangerous. You never know when a child can be harmed if a parent loses control. Children don't need to be hit in order to be taught how to behave." As far as the CFS was concerned, shocking a child with a low-intensity cattle prod, while not desirable, was no worse than a conventional spanking.


Spare the prod? Douglas Dycus, arrested and prosecuted for using a stun gun to discipline a teenage son.

At least one Florida parent took that idea to heart. In 2005, 40-year-old Douglas Dycus was "hotlined" to the CFS and arrested for using a cattle prod-style stun gun to discipline his 14-year-old son. According to Dycus, he was frequently frustrated by the inattentiveness of his teenage son -- a problem familiar to parents of teenagers everywhere. On one evening, as the family prepared to leave for an engagement, the 14-year-old was "wrestling" with a younger brother and refusing to obey instructions that he stop scuffling and get in the car.


So Dycus retrieved a small stunning device, and applied it to the upper arm of his son, with two predictable results: The youngster let out a sharp yelp, and then he got into the car.


A case of this sort being irresistible to tabloid media of all varieties, Dycus's attorney, Richard Kibbey, soon turned up on Joe Scarborough's old MSNBC evening program. Kibbey offered a two-pronged defense of Dycus's actions: First, the innate right of parents to discipline their children includes the use of appropriate physical chastisement; and second, that the means employed by Dycus were much milder than those used, with increasing frequency, by police who employ Tasers when dealing with unruly schoolchildren.


"Some parents can reprimand a child and get order," Kibbey pointed out. "Some parents need to slap or spank a child to get order. Some parents need to use a belt. Police and court systems should not be second-guessing a parent unless it involves torture or [physical punishment] for no valid reason whatsoever, which is not the case here."


Furthermore, Kibbey continued, "there's a double standard here in Florida, as well as across the nation. We have all been seeing in the last few months the police are using Taser guns, not handheld, but Taser guns, and shooting darts into 6-year-old children, a 12-year-old girl in Florida [last] November who was truant. She was shot because she skipped class that day. The police were never prosecuted and the police say they're -- quote -- `reviewing their policy.'" Those officers were never prosecuted, yet a parent, who knows his child better than anyone, who knows the history of this child, is no being prosecuted. Don't you think that's a double standard?"

















"Your agonizer, please!" The Mirror Universe's version of Transporter Chief Kyle pays for his inattention to a power surge by absorbing a punitive "agonizer" charge administered by Mirror Spock. You just can't trust guys who wear sinister Van Dyke beards, y'know....



Now, one can agree with Kibbey's reasoning without presenting a brief on behalf of parental use of cattle prods.


As the father of six children, none of which could be described as a quiet, placid introvert, I can understand the occasional need to administer discipline of an unpleasantly exemplary nature. Although I'm not disinclined toward corporal punishment, I consider it to be of extremely limited utility and employ it very sparingly.


Once, while visiting an authoritarian church, I overheard a conversation in which a father, in a voice colored with concern, described his young son as a "willful, high-spirited" individual; with an expression of almost vindictive satisfaction, his interlocutor exclaimed, "Well, the good thing is that as his father, it's your responsibility to break that will."


Try as I might, I can't understand how anyone -- let alone someone professing to worship the Author of the Sermon on the Mount -- could conclude that raising children involves breaking them in any sense. Certainly, it involves teaching them to restrain and discipline their appetites, to practice deferral of gratification, to treat others with respect and deference where appropriate, and to obey God's law (as summarized in the Two Great Commandments). It means helping them to understand and practice self-regulation.


But "breaking" another human being in any sense or context is abusive by definition -- irrespective of the means employed.


It stands to reason that the last thing the architects of a collectivist society want is a population of self-regulating, self-governing free individuals -- people of the sort who usually come from homes in which parental authority is firmly and fairly exercised, and disciplinary decisions are not subject to the appellate jurisdiction of the nulliparous agony aunts running the local child-grabber bureaucracy.


This helps explain why, under the obscene doctrine of Parens Patriae, the same State that for a century and a half or so has been diligently undermining parental authority in the home has steadily increased its arbitrary power over children in public schools and similar settings.


It's now reached a point where misbehaving children barely old enough to speak or read are subject to arrest, handcuffing, and electro-shock torture at the hands of the same State-employed strangers who stand prepared to "protect" those same children from the imperfections of their own parents.


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Totalitarianism In One City: Shreveport's Gun-Grabbing Mayor

Shreveport's Big Boss Man, Cedric Glover, and unidentified flunky: According to Glover, an advocate of civilian disarmament, his police have the power to "suspend" the rights of any motorist they stop, and can seize a civilian's firearms at will. Not that long ago, bigoted white southern mayors could be heard making the same assertions about black people.



Any time a motorist is stopped by a police officer, insists Shreveport, Louisiana Mayor Cedric Glover, "Your rights ... have been suspended." This includes not only the freedom of movement, but also, in the event the officer inquires as to whether the driver is carrying a weapon, "Your right to be able to hold on to your weapon and say whether [you] have a weapon or not" -- as well as the right to retain possession of that weapon, should the officer decide to confiscate it from you.


Should you choose not to answer the question, or answer it in the negative, the officer could still choose, "in the interest of officer safety, to secure you in a safe position" -- this most likely means outside the car with your hands cuffed behind your back -- "and then do an appropriate inspection of your vehicle."


The phrase "appropriate inspection" is more honestly rendered "Unconstitutional warrantless search."


Should the police officer then turn up a firearm or other weapon in the car, the driver "would be guilty or potentially guilty of even a more severe offense" than whatever he had allegedly done to precipitate the traffic stop, according to Mayor Glover. Police officers, according to Glover, are invested with "a power that the President of the United States does not have ... and that is the ability to be able to suspend your rights."


This is "one of the things that I say to each and every one of the police officers who graduates from the Shreveport Police Academy since I've been mayor." Fortunately for the public, one supposes, Mr. Glover remembers the lesson that Peter Parker learned from his kindly and sagacious uncle Ben -- that is, with great power comes great responsibility. "You have to understand there is a great deal of power that is vested within ... the law enforcement personnel of this country," Glover insists. "It's why there is a great deal of responsibility that has to go along with it."


Glover offered those remarkable observations, and many others like them, in a recorded phone call with Shreveport resident Robert Baillio.



Mr. Baillio had called to complain about a recent traffic stop in which an SPD officer, who-- before dealing with any other matter of business -- asked if Baillio had a firearm, then temporarily seized it from him.


Louisiana law recognizes the right of the state's residents to carry loaded weapons in their vehicles, and Baillio has a state-issued concealed carry permit -- that is, a piece of paper in which the state generously recognizes one facet of Baillio's innate right to bear arms.


According to Baillio's account, he was cordial and polite when he was stopped after supposedly neglecting to use a turn signal. That this was almost certainly a pretext stop is illustrated by the fact that Baillio never received a ticket. Supplemental evidence is offered by the fact that the conversation between the officer and Baillio focused entirely on the issue of gun ownership, including a question about Baillio's membership in the National Rifle Association.















This would be a heart-warming picture if it didn't feature a gun-grabber: Cedric Glover is consoled by one of his sweeter constituents after failing to win a role in "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps."


Baillio doesn't conceal his NRA membership; it's advertised by a sticker on the rear windshield of his truck, as are his very passionate views of the right to armed self-defense. "Armed We Are Citizens! Un-Armed We Are Subjects!" exclaims another bumper sticker, expressing a core truth of our republican heritage. Yet another sticker displays various kinds and grades of ammunition captioned by the directive, "Celebrate Diversity."


It's the safest of bets that what triggered the stop, as it were, was not a traffic infraction by Baillio, but rather the police officer's conditioned reflex to treat the public expression of pro-gun ownership sentiments as innately suspicious.


In brief, Baillio was a victim of political profiling of the sort being encouraged by the Department of Homeland Security and the totalitarian "watchdog" groups who have spent decades indoctrinating the police.


In his telephone chat with Glover, Baillio -- who was persistent but unfailingly polite -- pointed out that he "answered the [officer's] question honestly and he disarmed me."


"Which would be appropriate and proper action, sir," replied Glover. "The fact that you gave the correct answer -- it simply means that you did what you were supposed to do and that is to give that weapon to the police officer so he could appropriately place it in a place where it would be no threat to you, to him, or to anyone in the general public."



"Well, you know, he still had a gun," observed Baillio, hoping to underscore the fact that guns -- as objects, rather than actors -- do not pose a "threat" in and of themselves. "How is he --"



"Because he's a police officer," interjected Glover before he could finish the question. "As I've just related to you, that police officer has powers, sir, that you do not have."


Let's unpack that reply, shall we?


From Glover's perspective, it is only when firearms are in the hands of people other than the state's uniformed enforcers/oppressors that they constitute a threat, not only to the public and those in charge of exercising official violence but also to the private gun owner himself.


Glover, a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, clearly believes that any firearms in civilian hands should be considered illicit. This is, in both a cultural and constitutional sense, entirely un-American.


Interestingly, it is in harmony with the UN's position, however, as summarized in the world body's 2000 agitprop film Armed to the Teeth: The World-Wide Plague of Small Arms. That film insists that the only "legal" weapons are those "used by armies and police forces to protect us" -- as if the word "protection" describes the uses to which weapons are put by the enforcement organs of the criminal states that compose the UN.


It is his attitudes toward civilian firearms ownership and the plenary power of police, not his ethnicity or any similar accident of birth, that would make Glover a very suitable ruler of any of the scores of squalid Third World thugocracies represented in the UN.


According to Glover, a police officer may properly disarm any civilian at any time, and the civilian's duty is to surrender his gun -- willingly, readily, cheerfully, without cavil or question. This is because police officers, as numinous beings anointed by the Holy State, exude the essence of pure goodness and would never commit acts of criminal violence against disarmed civilians.


Tell that to Angela Garbarino, a woman who was arrested by the SPD last year for DWI and wound up lying in a pool of her own blood after being "subdued" in a police holding cell.

***

***

Gaps in the security camera record of the incident occur at convenient intervals, so it's not clear exactly how Garbarino wound up bloodied on the floor. In a photograph taken later Angela displays the marks of a severe beating, including two black eyes, a broken nose, and a cut on the forehead that required stitches.


Wylie Willis, the hired thug who administered the beating, can be observed in the video checking his hands to see if there is blood on them. He was dismissed after the incident for "violating departmental policy," but faced no other sanctions.


Like any other pseudo-male who beats a defenseless woman, Willis lied that his victim "slipped and fell."


Like any other police officer who loses his job after a criminal assault on a "civilian," Willis insists that his firing was unjustified.


And like any other police union anywhere in our once-free country, the Shreveport Police Union(led by Michael Carter -- see the photo above and to the right) insists that the abusive cop should get his job back.

She was protected and served: Angela Garbarino displays the results of a beating she received while handcuffed in the custody of Shreveport police.




Obviously, Willis should at the very least be prosecuted for felonious battery. Or, better yet, he should be put into a room, unarmed, with several of Angela's male relatives and given an opportunity to demonstrate the unalloyed martial prowess that enabled him to beat an intoxicated woman half his size whose hands were cuffed behind her back. Willis appears to have been a serial abuser of women, as do several others among Shreveport's ahem, finest. \


In April, Jasmine M. Winston filed a civil rights suit against the City of Shreveport. A couple of years ago she was beaten by a baton-wielding Officer Willis outside a nightclub and then slammed face-first into the concrete by fellow SPD thug Daniel Sawyer. Oh, the undaunted courage these two armed "men" displayed in double-teaming a solitary woman.



A lawsuit filed by Darlene Atkins in 2006 claims that Willis put a gun to the head of her son Dillion Freeman following a brief pursuit and threatened to shoot Dillion if any of his family approached him. Another suit filed that year by resident Tomeka Bush claimed that after she filed a complaint in the Atkins incident, Willis retaliated by seizing her car. As in the subsequent beating of Angela Garbarino, there were anomalies in the official video record of the Atkins incident; in this case, the entire video was missing. The SPD "investigated" the matter just long enough to satisfy itself that Willis (let's say it all together, shall we?) acted in accordance with department policy. He always did -- until his officially sanctioned criminal violence was documented beyond dispute.


Loathsome as he is, Willis is not exceptional.


In 2007, eight SPD officers were arrested for various offenses, including perjury, falsification of official reports, falsifying tickets, DWI, drug charges, and maintaining an "inappropriate" on-line relationship with an underage girl.


Of those offenses, the most striking are those committed in an official capacity. Given the latitude offered to Willis, it's difficult to imagine how blatantly an SPD officer would have to perjure himself before facing punishment.



Oddly enough, Cedric Glover didn't mention the corruption roiling in the SPD when, roughly a year ago, he vetoed a police retention plan that included a pay raise. And now that the "stimulus" spigots have been thrown open, Glover is eager to build his police department into a fighting force of extraordinary magnitude.



"We're asking for 90 additional police officers ... with this stimulus package [because] there is a portion that is available for cop spending and we want to go out there and capture as much of it as we can," oinked Cerdo, er, Cedric last February as the Holy One, His Munificence Barrack the Blessed (peace be upon him) hoisted the slop bucket over the national trough.



Along with expanding the local "infrastructure," Big Cerdo's chief priority for the stimulus is to use federal funds to expand his own herd of gun-grabbing Cerditos.* The same is probably true of dozens of other mayors across the country, some of which may boast police departments even more corrupt than the one afflicting Shreveport.



Shreveport resident Ken Krefft, president of a neighborhood association, is understandably worried that the SPD's corruption could damage the city's tourism industry: "This is not a good thing for the city [to tell tourists] -- `Come to Shreveport, we've got crooked cops.'" It used to be that Americans would have visit such destinations as Cuba to experience what it's like to deal with corrupt police who can disarm, beat, and presumably kill innocent people with impunity. Cedric Glover has thoughtfully turned his city into a totalitarian theme park we can visit without leaving the United States -- in a geographic sense, in any case.


(My emphatic thanks to "Liberranter" for tipping me to this story.)


Don't Forget ...

... to tune in to Pro Libertate Radio on the Liberty News Radio Network from 6:00-7:00 Central Time.

___
*"Cerdo" is Spanish for "pig."



On sale now.










Dum spiro, pugno!

Source: Pro Libertate

Canadian politician sues Jewish groups

TORONTO (JTA) -- An ex-candidate in Canada is suing the country's leading Jewish advocacy groups, alleging they ruined her political career.

Lesley Hughes, who was dumped as a Liberal candidate in a Winnipeg-area electoral district, claims the Canadian Jewish Congress and B'nai Brith Canada made false and defamatory accusations that she is anti-Semitic.

In a lawsuit filed June 16, Hughes alleges that as a result of the actions of the CJC and B'nai Brith, former federal Liberal leader Stephane Dion revoked her candidacy in last September's federal elections.

Hughes is suing the organizations, four of its senior members and Peter Kent, now a federal Cabinet minister who represents a heavily Jewish Toronto-area district.

In her lawsuit Hughes acknowledges that in a 2002 article in a Winnipeg community newspaper, she repeated a variation of the Internet canard that legions of Jews avoided death in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center because the Mossad knew of the attacks in advance.

"Israeli businesses, which had offices in the Towers, vacated the premises a week before the attacks, breaking their lease to do it," she wrote.

Hughes alleges in her suit that CJC and B'nai Brith, using a 6-year-old article, persuaded Dion to revoke her candidacy on the grounds that she was anti-Semitic and unfit for public office.

She says Kent, then a Conservative candidate, issued a news release on Sept. 26, 2008 in which he said Hughes holds "extreme, anti-Israel 9/11 conspiracy theories" and was "unfit to serve for public office."

Hughes claims she has been "branded as an anti-Semite and a person of unsavory character and, as a result, is no longer employable in her role as a freelance journalist/broadcaster." She also says she has suffered mental distress and humiliation.

None of the defendants has filed statements of defense, nor have any of the allegations been proven in court.

Source: Jewish Telegraph Agency

Found Source: The Radical Press

Real ID, Pass Act, Audit the Fed

Quote of the Day: "Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order." -- John V. Lindsay

The people of Iran are risking their lives, and in some cases losing them, in a bid to gain their freedom. We need not risk so much to restore and retain our freedom, but for that to remain true we must vigorously use our right to petition our government for a redress of grievances. This means...

We must relentlessly increase our pressure, telling Congress to obey the Constitution, and to undo the constitutional violations they've already committed. Our pressure must keep increasing until the politicians demonstrate their submission to the Constitution. To make that happen...

We must apply more pressure each month than we did the previous month. We're now nearing the end of June. To make sure we exceed the 36,512 messages we sent last month we're going to ask you to hit Congress on two issues today, the REAL ID Act and Congressman Ron Paul's Audit the Fed bill.

The de facto national ID card that the REAL ID Act would create, seems to be going nowhere. The people don't want it, and 25 states are refusing to impose it. This has been a significant victory for the idea that the people can pressure their government into submission. But...

The law remains on the books and will be a continuing threat until it's repealed. Meanwhile, the idea of a national ID card is being revived under the guise of a new name, the PASS Act.

Jim Harper, of the Cato Institute, reveals how the PASS Act is being driven by lobbyists seeking secure jobs as the procurers and protectors of federal funding that state governments would use to implement the PASS Act.

This must not be allowed to happen. YOU must serve as a counter-lobby against the professional lobbyists who want to pick your pocket and violate your rights.

As we've told you before, not only is a national ID card essentially an internal passport like those used by dictatorial governments around the world, we think it will also help pave the way for federal bureaucrats to control all of your health care decisions.

Please go to DownsizeDC.org's REAL ID campaign page and send your Congressional employees a message.

Tell them to repeal the REAL ID Act. Use your personal comments to tell them they must also KILL the PASS Act.

After you've done that, please also apply additional pressure to get Ron Paul's Audit the Fed bill passed. There's continuing good news on this front. The bill now has 237 cosponsors in the House, and a second cosponsor, David Vitter (R-LA), has signed on in the Senate. Go here to check if your House Rep. is already a co-sponsor. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-1207

Then go to DownsizeDC.org's campaign page to Audit the Fed and urge passage of HR 1207 in the House and S 604 in the Senate.

Use your personal comments to thank your Rep if he or she is already a co-sponsor, or to urge him or her to become a co-sponsor. Urge your Senators to cosponsor S. 604 unless your Senator is DeMint or Vitter, in which case you should thank them for their support of S. 604.

Remember what the people in Iran are facing, and take action secure in the knowledge that no one is going to shoot at you because you're pressuring your government.

Source: Downsize DC

Sign up to save our pubs and clubs

If you haven't already done so you can sign up to support our new Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign HERE.

Yesterday's launch (see HERE) was attended by Antony Worrall Thompson, Greg Knight MP (Conservative) and David Clelland MP (Labour), with a message of support from John Hemming MP (Lib Dem), and it's important that we get the message out and encourage as many people as possible to the support the campaign.

Note: the campaign website is best viewed in Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 8. If you a problem viewing the site on any other browser please let us know.

Update on Wednesday, June 24, 2009 by Simon Clark

Please support Greg Knight's position against anti-smoking comments HERE. See also the Beverley Guardian report HERE.

Source: Taking Liberties